Doomsayers and Skeptics

James Mann, the author of the excellent Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet, has an article about the Bush second term on the Foreign Policy website. “Four More Years” asks whether Bush's international strategy will be more of the same, or more restrained. There are two camps that Mann identifies, the Doomsayers and the Skeptics:

The Doomsayers suggest that Bush’s second term is likely to produce further military interventions overseas, along the lines of Iraq in 2003. Perhaps Syria may be the next target of U.S. military power, they suggest, or Iran. They believe that the neoconservatives, who were the driving force behind the Bush administration’s preventive war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, will have even greater power and influence, now that the president has won reelection. ...

The Skeptics contend that Bush’s foreign policy in his second term will turn out to be more cautious and less belligerent than his first, if not by choice, then by compulsion. Whatever some hawks might like to do, the reality is that the Bush administration will face a series of constraints—military, diplomatic, political, and economic—that will curb its ability to launch new preventive wars.

I tend to agree with Mann that the second scenario is more plausible, if only because of the enormous drain on American military resources that Iraq is going to require over the next few years. However I do not think that this is the end of the neocon influence in the White House. There are more weapons in the American arsenal than brute on-the-ground military force, and the neocon philosophy can be advanced through other means, including multilateral and diplomatic avenues.

Iraq was an unusual case where military force was necessary--Iran poses a different challenge that will require a different solution. North Korea is an altogether unique problem, that will probably be dealt with by traditional Cold War policies of containment and deterrence. Despite the stereotyping of some members of the left (and the paleocon right), neoconservative thought does not always call for the use of military force.